With Driverless Cars on the Horizon, Electric Cars are Getting a Boost

The march toward electric cars has steadily gained steam over the past couple months. In early July, Volvo made waves by announcing all new models will be either hybrid or fully electric by 2019. At the time, analysts at The Atlantic and The New York Times saw this as the boldest move by any major car maker to “move so aggressively into electric or hybrid cars.”

Because of high purchase prices, lengthy charging times and limited ranges, cars that run solely on battery power are still rare in most countries. Yet, solving these challenges to offer affordable high-performance electric cars is becoming more and more important, especially for automakers who want to demonstrate that they’re working to combat pollution and climate change.

Electric cars are clearly the future of the auto industry, and the growing interest in driverless cars reinforces their relevance. Electric cars have one big advantage over traditional, internal combustion engine cars here: Their lack of mechanical complexity makes them more suitable for the heavy use needed for driverless technology.

“Rapid advances in self-driving cars will encourage a shift to battery power,” explains Jack Ewing of TheNew York Times. “It is simpler to link self-driving software to an electric motor than to a conventional engine.”

But, the path to driverless cars is not all smooth sailing. Developers are dealing with a number of technological, ethical and security challenges, so this won’t become reality all that soon. While we wait, it’s certainly worth investing in an electric car. And, if you want to feel like you’re already driving in a car from the future, consider upgrading your infotainment system or taking another look at different car gadgets. We’ve also rounded up some of the latest auto technologies that aim to make your ride a bit more fun and worry-free.

LINK, for instance, allows drivers to bring 2 TB of content – pretty much their entire digital worlds – into the car with them. From there, passengers can use LINK to create a WiFi bubble within the vehicle to share and connect with almost any device or platform to help make the ride more enjoyable. Passengers can upload their favorite content to LINK that they can then share with the vehicle’s infotainment system, allowing users to enjoy almost any show or movie they’d like regardless of where they are in their travels.

Learn more about this pocket-sized powerhouse and how it can change how you drive.

I’ve always wanted to go electric and now there’s so many to choose from! My daughter would be a HUUUGE fan of LINK, so this is definitely something we would look into getting for our family in the next couple years…

We will be in the market for a new car in the next couple of years and are looking at a pluggable hybrid model. While I’d love to go all-electric, most don’t have a lot of range. If we have to sorty out before a hurricane, we need the option to add gas in a pinch. However, that LINK sounds pretty awesome. I love a portable wi-fi!

Living in Paris I dont drive my car that much, as we have free electric cars in the city (like a small amount per month) that I love to use ! I hope one day these cars will be more affordable for everyone to have one!

It’s interesting to see where this all goes in the near future. It may even be within the next gen or two. But yes, still many hurdles to get past before it’s reality. Wish we could get an electric, though 🙂

It’s amazing to me how far technology has come just in the past 25 years, the cars of my childhood are so far gone at this point. I do find that the idea of driverless cars is slightly scary to me because I know that technology no matter how great it is cannot be aware of the drivers around you and the variables that could cause accidents.